April

“Yesterday, I took a trip with  my whole school, except April. She didn’t make it.”  From a paragraph written by a 2nd grader and published as part of an education section in the Williamsport Sun-Gazette.

The last sentence of this paragraph haunts me.

Why did poor April not “make it”?

Was her dog run over just as she was about to leave for school

and she spent the day grieving for him?

Had she neglected to have her parents sign the consent form

and therefore was barred from this outing?

Did she see this class trip as a joyous excuse to escape the

tedium of school? Or the bullying?

Or was it something even more dire?

Did she suffer the onset of symptoms of a disease that eventually proved fatal?

Poor April.

The possibilities are infinite.

I think back to my school days at P.S. 154.

Was it second or third grade?

I forgot my permission slip for a school trip to Prospect Park.

In vain, I begged my teacher to call my home and get verbal permission.

I promised to be really good on the trip.

Instead, I was put in the back of Miss Copeland’s fifth grade class for the day and cried and cried.

Surely, I could not have cried the entire school day, but that’s the way I remember it.

What must this teacher (my best friend’s aunt) have made of this weeping child?

She did not try to comfort me, but then she had a class to teach so I could hardly have expected her to take time out to do so.

Yet her seeming indifference led me to even more vigorous crying.

What would you have done if you had been she?

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